The Queer, Feminist, and Transgender Studies Research Cluster, initially founded in 2004 as the Queer Research Cluster (QRC), was subsequently renamed the QFT. Between 2007 and 2014, it served as a lively and dynamic forum for critical dialogues among graduate students and faculty on current activist scholarship in these three related fields. It also hosted the annual graduate student conference entitled Queer Symposium from 2007 through 2014.

In the 2017-2018 iteration of QFT, as political figures have taken up explicit stances against inclusion for a range of bodies and groups marked as other according to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, dis/ability, immigration or citizenship status, and class, the cultural analyses developed in queer, feminist and trans studies become even more urgent.

For 2017-2018, the Cluster will center discussions on contemporary critiques of the de-humanizing and de-subjectifying violences productive of social death, and simultaneously on queer, feminist and trans studies’ re-assessments of care, health, sharing, and intimacy, re-framings that enable forms of survival, embodiment, and cultural production.

The QFT cluster will host reading groups, film screenings, professionalizing workshops, symposia, and a graduate student and faculty conference during the 2017-2018 school-year to foster exchange between graduate students and faculty across the university, and between UC Davis and other institutions.

CONTACT:

QFT Email: qft.ucdavis@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QFTCluster/